Ethnic evolution: from cheese “ponies” to a Hutsul wedding
The Carpathian village of Kosmach recently hosted the EthnoEvolution festival, which was attended by about 10,000 visitors from all over Ukraine and abroad.
The organizers never expected such a turnout. According to Valerii Hladunets, the creator of the festival, even Sheshory, whose traditions were picked up on by EthnoEvolution, got this large crowd of visitors only in the fourth year of its existence. The organizers of the Kosmach party have come a long way from last year’s debut at the assembly hall of Kyiv’s National Vadym Hetman Economic University to this year’s large-scale festival in the village of Kosmach, the center of Hutsul culture.
Hladunets says there have always been many different ways of putting on a festival. The choice fell on Kosmach not only because its mayor, Dmytro Pozhodzhuk, is a folk master and chairman of the All- Ukrainian Coordinating Board for the Study and Revival of Easter Egg Painting. The surrounding landscape gives this village a peculiar natural outline in the shape of a sun with 32 shining rays. “The village of Kosmach, with an area of about 100 sq. km., is considered the largest in Ukraine and all of Europe. Linguists interpret its name as ‘the sun’s cell,’” says Hladunets, stressing the uniqueness of this place.
Natalka Leshchenko, a festival organizer and spokesperson, says that there were also some downsides. For example, villagers raised the prices for lodgings, although initially the organizers had clinched a totally different agreement with local residents. In some cases, hosts pushed their guests out of the house in the morning, and musicians were not paid any fees.
Another headache for the organizers was registering festival visitors so that they would make contributions to defray organizational costs (10 hryvnias for students and 25 hryvnias for everyone else). According to Leshchenko, only about 1,500 people were officially registered. Even when the price was slashed to ten hryvnias for everyone, the situation did not change radically.
The festival started after lunch in a solemn and impressive way with a performance by trembita (Ukrainian alpenhorn) players. Nina Matviienko, the queen of traditional Ukrainian songs, graced the ceremony with her presence. Another treat on the first day was a performance by the popular children’s storyteller Sashko the Lyre Player (Oleksandr Vlasiuk) who thrilled the audience with his new show — a burlesque. There were two stages at EthnoEvolution: a small one, where all the pop groups performed, and one for theatrical shows.
The organizers also made sure that avid theatergoers eager to see shows even in the Carpathians had a good time: they invited the Kyiv theaters Dakh (Roof) and Choven (Boat) to the festival. A stage was set up near Pistynka River on Monchil Hill.
In the evenings, the village club showed Ukrainian films for all tastes: from a retrospective of Ukrainian classics to contemporary documentaries, feature films, and animated movies.
The festival also saw the Third World Congress of Easter Egg Painters, with delegates who arrived from all over the world. There was also an egg-painting master class, where everyone could try their hand at painting Ukrainian Easter eggs or buy ready-made ones.
Sitting pretty right on the ground strewn with fragrant Carpathian hay, women and young girls were making rag dolls — ancient protective talismans — that have delighted Ukrainian children since the Trypillian age. Liudmyla Teslenko-Ponomarenko, a master doll-maker known outside the confines of Ukraine, distributed thread, pieces of fabric, and useful advice to participants.
One master class was devoted to making the trembita, which should only be fashioned out of a pine tree that has been struck by lightning. The tree should be at least three meters tall and grow at an altitude of 1,000-1,500 meters, not in a valley.
Enterprising villagers put up tents, tables, and benches not far from the main stage, setting up a kind of field kitchen to produce the national cuisine. The air was filled with the aromas of barbecue and hot banush, Ukraine’s version of polenta, made with traditional Hutsul goat cheese. “It is made with corn flour and sour cream,” says a local woman who cooks for the tourists from dawn to dusk, “and it is usually served with crumbed goat cheese on top. Sometimes we also add mushrooms and cracklings.”
She explains that banush should be stirred with a wooden spoon and only in one direction. Men are the ones who are supposed to make genuine banush: it should be cooked on an open fire so that the dish smells of smoke, and the sour cream should be three days old and made of sheep’s milk.
But no dish is as popular as cheese “ponies.” It used to be that only the peasants of Kosiv district knew how to make them, but this culinary art later spread to other areas of Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Yet even today the people of Kosiv are considered unrivalled masters. Maria Matviichuk, Meritorious Master of Ukraine, who is from the village of Brustury, says that the technique is very simple but it has certain particularities. For example, when it is already molded, the “pony” is dipped into a saline solution, after which it becomes fit for eating — practically forever. “A day or two, or 30 years,” Matviichuk says smiling. “It will just dry up but it will never go bad.”
“The festival’s main goal was cultural enlightenment rather than entertainment,” Hladunets says. Plans are underway to turn it into a traveling festival so that the world can see more gems of Ukrainian culture.
